This six book Regency series debuted in October 2010 with Whisper of Scandal. I've always liked the idea of strong female characters doing unusual and sometimes outrageous things. The more I have researched the Regency period the more I have realised that women undertook all kinds of work, travelled to far flung places and had the sorts of adventures and experiences that were far from the sequestered lives we sometimes imagine them living. Each of the books is a standalone story in itself but the scandalous women – and their heroes – feature in each other's stories.
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The Brides of Fortune series focuses on the strong bonds of female friendship. Each book in the series is a standalone story but there is a mystery that runs beneath all the books in the series and comes to a conclusion in the final book, The Undoing of a Lady. The books are all set in and around the fictional village of Fortune's Folly in Yorkshire, which was inspired by the spa town of Harrogate, one of the places I knew well from my childhood. The Secrets of a Courtesan, the Prequel to the series, will be rereleasing in November, 2012.
I loved writing the Bluestocking Brides series for Harlequin Historicals! Set in Suffolk at a time when the threat of Napoleonic invasion was at its height, the books focus on the adventures of the ladies of the Midwinter Reading Group. The Notorious Lord features one of my favourite heroes, an Indiana Jones-style adventurer and archaeologist. The book was inspired by the real life discovery of the Sutton Hoo treasure. The love story of Lady Sally Saltire and the Duke of Kestrel runs through the three books of the series as a counterpoint to the individual romances in each story. A couple of years after the series was published Mills & Boon approached me to write a book to celebrate their centenary so I wrote the Edwardian set book The Last Rake in London, which has as its hero Jack Kestrel, great grandson of Lady Sally and the Duke.
In the Tallant quartet I explore the sibling relationship between Joss and his wicked sister Juliana Tallant, their loves and lives. Joss lives the classic life of a Regency rake, drinking, gambling and making love to beautiful women – until he meets philanthropist Amy Bainbridge who turns his life upside down. Juliana is a female rake at a time when to behave with such sexual abandon would put a woman right on the edge of respectable society. Wayward Widow, Juliana's story, was the book for which I received my first RITA nomination and it is very close to my heart.
This pair of books was inspired by a place – Lundy Island off the west coast of Britain. The island has a wild and treacherous history and it led me to create Fairhaven Island, over which the warring West Country families of the Mostyns and the Trevithicks had fought for generations. When Beth Mostyn challenges Marcus Trevithick to a game of chance with the island as prize and he reneges on the deal, the scene is set for a very passionate showdown between the beautiful widow and the masterful earl!
These linked books were amongst my earliest for Harlequin Mills & Boon and are more traditional in style than my later Regency historicals. I was living in a haunted house in Somerset when I wrote my first book, True Colours, and I set the book in that county because it is one of the most atmospheric and historical places I know. The sequel, The Larkswood Legacy, features Annabella, the horrible sister to Alicia, the heroine of True Colours. It was fun trying to redeem Annabella. She had some hard lessons to learn and readers who had disliked her very much in the first book found themselves warming to her when all her secrets were revealed.
In the first of the Suffolk Series, The Virtuous Cyprian, I explored the idea of twins who swap identities, which was a theme that was great fun. The Suffolk Series also contains Miss Verey's Proposal, one of my favourite traditional Regencies, which was inspired by the poem The Eve of St Agnes by Keats.
There will be lots of features about the connected books coming to the blog!
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I love my research and have always been interested in the different and unusual in terms of historical backgrounds and settings, and in the parallels between the past and the present. Whilst the intense emotional and romantic relationship will always be the central focus of my books, they are set against a historical background that I strive to make vivid, authentic and alive.
Daunstey Park: The Last Rake in London
Desired
Notorious
Mistress by Midnight
One Wicked Sin
Whisper of Scandal
The Undoing of a Lady
The Scandals of an Innocent
The Confessions of a Duchess
The Secrets of a Courtesan
Unmasked
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